Richard Burton


 * This article is about the 20th-century actor. For the 19th-century explorer and author, see Richard Francis Burton. For the organizational theorist, see Richard M. Burton.

Richard Burton, CBE (November 10, 1925– August 5, 1984) born Richard Walter Jenkins was a Welsh actor noted for his mellifluous baritone voice and his great acting talent. Establishing himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, with a memorable performance of Hamlet in 1964, Burton was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic and dramaturg Kenneth Tynan.

Quotes

 * If I had a chance for another life, I would certainly choose a better complexion... I rather like my reputation, actually, that of a spoiled genius from the Welsh gutter, a drunk, a womanizer; it's rather an attractive image. When he reached the age of 50, after a five-year career slump. I can only say with Edith Piaf, 'Je ne regrette rien'.
 * In "Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star"


 * You reach the top of the heap, but it's a circle, and you slip on the down side; maybe for years. You get scared. He said then he thought he was coming out of a slump.
 * In "Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star"


 * This diamond has so many carats it's almost a turnip.
 * In Olivia St. Claire Sex Devotional: 365 Days of Passion, Positions, and Pure Pleasure, Adams Media, 18 November 2009, p. 309
 * The diamond weighing 69.4 carats was gifted by Burton to Elizabeth Taylor on her fortieth birthday, which she later sold after her divorce for $5 million to fund a hospital in Botswana.


 * She can do everything…there’s nothing she can’t do...she looks after me so well. Thank God I’ve found her.’
 * About Sally Hay whom he married in 1983, in “Life: Richard Burton”


 * My father considered that anyone who went to chapel and didn't drink alcohol was not to be tolerated. I grew up in that belief.
 * In Playboy Interviews, Playboy Press, 1967, p. 100


 * If you're a bad actor, you don't get hired. But if you're a bad doctor, you can still practice medicine.
 * In Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love, Mail Online, 7 June 2010
 * The Welsh are all actors. It's only the bad ones who become professional.
 * In The Little Book of Wales, The History Press, 1 May 2013, p. 56


 * If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.
 * In Gene N Landrum Paranoia & Power: Fear & Fame of Entertainment Icons, Morgan James Publishing, 1 November 2007, p. 225


 * When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk.
 * In Mark Pollman Bottled Wisdom: Over 1,000 Spirited Quotations & Anecdotes, Wildstone Media, 1 January 1998, p. 146,


 * I stayed in bed all day yesterday, for instance, while she [Elizabeth Taylor] spent the entire day until well after midnight sitting in the main room, gossiping, etc. And, of course, inevitably sipping away at the drinks... What is more frightening is that she has become bored with everything in life.
 * In "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love."


 * She [Elizabeth Taylor] never reads a book, at least not more than a couple of pages at a time... I have always been a heavy drinker but now as a result of this half-life we've been leading I am drinking twice as much. The upshot will be that I'll die of drink while she'll go blithely on in her half-world.
 * In "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love."
 * I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out.
 * In Katharine Viner The Guardian Year 2006, Random House, 2007, p. 287


 * I'm afraid we are temporarily out in the cold, and fallen stars. What is remarkable is that we have stayed up there for so long.
 * In "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love."
 * The reason for this was the low-budget movies made by new kids on the block that were making money.


 * 'Dear Long-wayaway-one,' very antisocial I am when I don't booze. And no fun when you're not around... Do you love me? Do you want to be a lazy Jane and never work again? Once I stopped boozing I have enjoyed not working. But we can't do it though.
 * In "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love."


 * I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely. And it should be on the loveliest woman [Elizabeth Taylor] in the world.
 * In "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love."
 * From then on, the stone came to be known as the 'Taylor-Burton diamond'


 * I have always felt that the camera hasn't liked me. I'm a stage animal. I have to be big and loud, and the camera needs you to be small and naturalistic and subtle; much more naturalistic. I'm as subtle as a buffalo stampede.
 * In Richard Burton Biography, IMDb


 * Monogamy is absolutely imperative. The minute you start fiddling around outside the idea of monogamy, nothing satisfies anymore. Suppose you make love to an exciting woman other than your wife, it can’t remain enough to go bed with her there must be something else, something more than the absolute compulsion of the body. But if there is something more, it will eventually destroy either you or your marriage.
 * In James Robert Parish The Hollywood Book of Breakups, John Wiley & Sons, 20-Dec-2010, p. 348


 * Although I like to be thought of as a tough rugby-playing Welsh miner's son, able to take on the world, the reality is that this image is just superficial. I am the reverse of what people think.
 * In Richard Burton Biography, IMDb


 * It's difficult for me to know where to start with rugby. I come from a fanatically rugby-conscious Welsh miner's family, know so much about it, have read so much about it, have heard with delight so many massive lies and stupendous exaggerations about it and have contributed my own fair share, and five of my six brothers played it, one with some distinction... it's difficu1t for me to know where to start so I’ll begin with the end. The last shall be first, as it is said, so I'll tell you about the last match I ever played in...I had played the game representatively from the age of ten until those who employed me in my profession, which is that of actor, insisted that I was a bad insurance risk against certain dread teams in dead-end valleys who would have little respect, no respect, or outright disrespect for what I was pleased to call my face. What if I were unfortunate enough to be on the deck in the middle of a loose maul...they murmured in dollar accents?
 * In Richard Burton’s Last Match From Take the Ball and Run – A Rugby Anthology by Godfrey Smith, Wesclark, 1953.


 * Richard Burton is now my epitaph, my cross, my title, my image. I have achieved a kind of diabolical fame. It has nothing to do with my talents as an actor. That counts for little now. I am the diabolically famous Richard Burton.
 * Interview in 1963 quoted In Robert Andrews The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Penguin UK, 30 October 2003, p. 259

About Richard Burton

 * At two years' old, Richard was scooped up by his sister Cecilia or ‘Cis’, and taken to live with her and her husband, Elfed, and their two daughters Marian and Rhianon, in Port Talbot. He remained forever grateful to Cis throughout his varied and colourful life.
 * Biography, in Life: Richard Burton, Richardburton.com


 * The magnificent baritone was not merely a voice. It was an orchestra of enormous range and power, its graceful sound seemed to linger on for millions who had heard it on film and stage. Homer must have known someone very much like Richard Burton.
 * Gerald Clarke, in Show Business: The Mellifluous Prince of Disorder, 20 August 1984


 * [He was] the 12th of 13 children of a hard-drinking but charming coal miner in the village of Pontryhydfen, South Wales...At the age of 10, he was educated under the tutorship of a schoolmaster named Philip Burton who became his guardian and young Richard took his name.
 * Maureen Dowd, in Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star, The New York Times, 6 August 1984


 * In the Druid's Rest, Richard won the role in which he made his London debut at age 18. ''In a wretched part, he showed exceptional ability.
 * New Statesman, in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”


 * He was a Welsh coal miner's son whose celebrity was defined as much by his rakish personal life as his remarkable acting skills...One of Britain's greatest Shakespearean stage actors by the age of 27, he offered rugged good looks, a magnetic stage presence and an incomparable voice...[His voice]'with a tympanic resonance so rich and overpowering that it could give an air of verse to a recipe for stewed hare.
 * John McPhee in Time Magazine quoted in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”


 * a monstrous perfectionist and a troubled spirit.
 * Friends, in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”


 * He should have been in the same rank as Laurence Olivier, but he was very wild and had a scandal around him all the time and I think in theater circles that would not be approved of.
 * Sir John Gielgud, in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”


 * a born actor...He was serious, charming, with tremendous skill...He chose a rather mad way of throwing away his theater career but obviously he became very famous and a world figure through being a film star. He was awfully good to people and generous.
 * Sir John Gielgud, who had worked with him on the film Wagner, in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”


 * He was marvellous at rehearsals. There was the true theatrical instinct. You only had to indicate - scarcely even that.
 * Sir John Gielgud, on his acting ability in Hamlet quoted in Riachard Burton (1925-1984), Place :Pontrhydfen:Wales, Welshwales.com


 * He has a terrific way with women. I don't think he has missed more than half a dozen.
 * Fredric March, in “Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star”


 * Throughout his life he would quote and write in his Notebooks chunks of John Donne, Edward Jones, John Betjeman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Dunbar, Shakespeare and his greatest read Dylan Thomas. Dylan became his hero. Sweetly, their paths would later cross and a good friendship would grow.
 * Biography, in "Life: Richard Burton"


 * Money was nice but it was not everything to the actor whose greatest joys were words, words, and words.
 * Biography, in "Life: Richard Burton"


 * Burton ‘was now the natural successor to Olivier.
 * Kenneth Tynan, after his Burton's performances in Hollywood, in "Life: Richard Burton"
 * In 1956 Richard was awarded the Evening Standard drama award for his Henry V.


 * A brimming pool running disturbingly deep...His voice is urgent and keen... He turned interested speculation into awe as soon as he started to speak.
 * Kenneth Tynan of British theatre, in “Life: Richard Burton”


 * Exceptional ability.
 * A critic’s comment when he, in 1944, before going to Oxford, appeared in The Druid’s Rest, a play by Emlyn Williams, quoted in “Life: Richard Burton”
 * From scandalous beginning to tormented end, theirs was the most epic love story in Hollywood history: a blaze of headlines, booze, jewels, brawls, and private jets. Marrying and divorcing twice, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton rocked the culture and each other's lives with a passion that reverberated long after Burton’s 1984 death.
 * Sam Kashner, in A Love Too Big To Last, Vanity Fair, July 2010
 * Surrounded by his thousand treasured volumes of the Everyman's Library—a gift from Elizabeth—he wrote a letter to Elizabeth and posted it to her home in Bel Air, in Los Angeles. But by the time she received the letter, Burton was dead. He had gone to bed and sometime during the night suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
 * Sam Kashner, in "A Love Too Big To Last"


 * A gifted actor who rose to fame due to a combination of raw sex appeal, talent, and his grand romance with Elizabeth Taylor. He was ruggedly handsome and blessed with a mellifluous baritone that could make the reading of a dictionary sound like poetry. Many critics lamented the fact that he didn't live up to his potential.
 * Scott Siegel, Barbara Siegel, in Burton, Richard, Encyclopedia of Hollywood, Second Edition


 * Alcoholism began taking its toll on Burton and, perhaps even more insidiously, his disregard for his craft began to tell. He cared little for his movie projects except for the cash they might earn him, a fact he readily acknowledged. Yet, despite his many mediocre movies, his appeal as an actor was undeniable, and he did occasionally soar in a few of his later movies,
 * Scott Siegel, Barbara Siegel, in "Burton, Richard"


 * Burton's much ballyhooed affair with Elizabeth Taylor during the making of Cleopatra turned him into an international sex symbol. He was Mark Antony to Taylor's Cleopatra, and the press went wild with the story. Until then, he was considered the heir to Olivier as England's greatest actor.
 * Scott Siegel, Barbara Siegel, in "Burton, Richard"


 * Make up your mind, dear heart. Do you want to be a great actor or a household word?" Burton's reply was, "Both."
 * Olivier, on the set of Cleopatra, in "Burton, Richard"